Requirement to connect to WordPress.com

Jetpack has improved greatly improved since I wrote this. So I am leaving this post for historical purposes, but have now given this plugin a four star rating.

I trying to use JetPack on a new website I was working on and it said

“Connect to WordPress.com to use JetPack fully etc… ” I only wanted the sharing part of the plugin. So I didn’t really need to connect to WordPress.com So I clicked the clear x to hide the message. The tooltip told me this would also deactivate the plugin.

1. Why would not wanting to connect to WordPress.com make me deactivate all the plugin features that didn’t require WordPress.com account?

Most of the Jetpack modules require a connection to WordPress.com. Some of them, like the Sharing module, do not. However, to avoid any confusion, we chose to require a connection to be made before to use any of the modules.
In the past and when the connection notice was overly hidden or constrained to a specific page it was confusing for many people.

However, if you’d prefer to use only the Sharing module, without having to connect to a WordPress.com account, you can do so by enabling Jetpack’s development mode. Try adding the following constant to your site’s wp-config.php file:

define( 'JETPACK_DEV_DEBUG', true);

You will then be able to activate modules that don’t require a connection to WordPress.com.

2. The plugin didn’t deactivate as the tool tip suggests it also doesn’t hide the notice box.

You’re right, nice catch! I opened a trac ticket about this problem, and we’ll get it fixed in a future Jetpack release. Thanks for the report!